topic Re: Comparing dates with if statment in SAS Programming

Comparing dates with if statment

Curly — Tue, 07 Mar 2017 00:26:01 GMT

Hi everyone,

I'm still pretty new to sas.

Here is the situation.

I have a table (Merged1) that has IDnumbers some descriptions and 2 dates, an event date and a consent date. both of the dates are in the format MMDDYY10 and each row has all these variables.

I want to get a data set where the consent date is before the event date. So if an even happened before the consent it will not be in my new data set. I have something like this...

data Sample1;

set merged_data;

where event_date > consent_date;

run;

I know that dates are just numbers counting from a certain date, so I would imagine this would work, but that is not the case.

please and thank you

Re: Comparing dates with if statment

Kurt_Bremser — Tue, 07 Mar 2017 00:32:00 GMT

Make sure (proc contents) that the date variables are numeric with a MMDDYY10. assigned.

If that is the case, post some examples that illustrate your issues in a data step with datalines.

Re: Comparing dates with if statment

Reeza — Tue, 07 Mar 2017 01:05:38 GMT

@Curly wrote:

Hi everyone,

I would imagine this would work, but that is not the case.

please and thank you

What does that mean? How did it not work?

Re: Comparing dates with if statment

art297 — Tue, 07 Mar 2017 03:06:41 GMT

If your two dates are just character strings that look like dates, just change your code to:

data Sample1;
    set merged_data;
    if input(event_date,mmddyy10.) > input(consent_date,mmddyy10.);
run;

HTH,

Art, CEO, AnalystFinder.com

Re: Comparing dates with if statment

ballardw — Tue, 07 Mar 2017 16:00:07 GMT

Example data.

Instructions here: https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Communities-Library/How-to-create-a-data-step-version-of-your-data-AKA-generate/ta-p/258712 will show how to turn an existing SAS data set into data step code that can be pasted into a forum code box using the {i} icon or attached as text to show exactly what you have and that we can test code against.

Re: Comparing dates with if statment

SuryaKiran — Tue, 07 Mar 2017 16:37:38 GMT

You need to look into the descriptor portion about how the dates are formated. Use PROC CONTENTS and see weather the dates are char or num and use appropriate method as mentioned by others.